


The Pies

by cukibola



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Cooking, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Kay doesn't like the other knights, Revenge, accidental cannibalism, neither are his vctims, referenced episode of sir pinel's apple, the main character is not a morally pure person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:42:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25128700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cukibola/pseuds/cukibola
Summary: There are two things I like: Sir Kay, from Arthurian legends, and I think he deserves some catharsis; and Titus Andronicus by William Shakespeare, along with its film adaptation by Julie Taymor. I guess you can already guess what is going on here.
Kudos: 2





	The Pies

**Author's Note:**

> Hark, villains! I will grind your bones to dust  
> And with your blood and it I'll make a paste,  
> And of the paste a coffin I will rear  
> And make two pasties of your shameful heads,  
> And bid that strumpet, your unhallow'd dam,  
> Like to the earth swallow her own increase.  
> This is the feast that I have bid her to,  
> And this the banquet she shall surfeit on;  
> And now prepare your throats  
> -Titus, 1999

He took off the fabric bags from their heads, allowing Kay to see their faces. Noble Claris and good Laris, both of them gagged and shaking, his eyes injected in fear upon seeing him. Kay dedicated them his sharpest smile, but only came out a twisted threat of a bite. And indeed, he wanted to bite them, throw himself like a hungry wolf on his throats, but that would have been too quick of an end. 

He tied up their ankles, jumped over the old wooden table, hanged them over it, and then put some basins under their heads. He saw those basins, painted in a shade of blue and decorated with some overcomplicated green and golden knots. Seánna had been such a great artist alive… The memory of her doing those wee objects and many others more, the memories of her joyful and smiling were cut by the muffled sounds of those two criminals. This time they wouldn’t get away with it, and Kay gave to one of them—which one, he couldn’t care less—a good punch that made him swing under the horrified gaze of the other one. Kay paid no more attention to them, and instead went to the mill stones, taking off the wedges. 

Outside there was a great thunderstorm, and the stones soon began going up and down. May they scream, nobody would hear them. Kay took off their gags and, as he had guessed, they began screaming and begging. They sounded like pigs, he thought at first, but then he reminded himself pigs were better than them. Their eyes quickly saw the fire, the barrel with fresh water, a clean set of clothes… and the ready set of knives and other utensils over and under the table. They were screaming louder now, and Kay had to repeat the punching, but he didn’t know if it was the same as before. They did shut up, and were now trembling like poor little lambs.  
If the circumstances had been different, Kay would have laughed. Oh, to see those great knights of the great Round Table naked, hanging upside down and crying like babies! He could bet such a scene wouldn’t be featuring in any great song or roman. Why they were there would not either, but what he was about to do would probably make those poets and well-bred knights cum their entire seed! Apparently, little Claris got some of his big mouth back and with shaky voice he was finally able to ask:

“Why are we here?”

How curious, there had been no “you dirty seneschal” or anything in the same vein at the end. Maybe he wasn’t even talking to Kay, who knows, but just in case, he decided to answer, “Take a wild guess, Sir Tadpole”. But, as he didn’t think of them as being enough intelligent to do so, he began to sharp the knife prepared to bone them. 

“You damned villain!” that sounded more like them. 

“If I am a villain, then what are you?!” he screamed, throwing his hands on the table, making the objects shake. The thunder outside roared with him, and the lightning that entered through the windows illuminated his face in the creepiest way. Only then did those knights see how sharp and white his teeth were… “Don’t try to make excuses for yourselves! Could you imagine how did I feel when Dame Morvydd arrived and told me she was sorry, only to give me the details of…” he took a deep breath to recompose himself upon remembering what these two had done to his beloved Seánna, “of what you did to her. How you tortured, raped and then murdered her in the cruel way of your fucking cult!” 

The image of her body returned to him, of the corpse tied up to a tree only kept in place by those ropes, of her torn clothes scattered all over the place, of her pale cold skin all covered in black spots and wounds, of the blue marks that betrayed the use of that poison called eitr, and of the bag covering her head. To calm himself Kay punched Claris, but this time it wasn’t enough. The blood from his swallow nose tapped in the bowl, and Kay threw the knife between the basins, making Laris flinch. 

“I’m not in the mood to waste more of my precious time with any of you,” he lied in a cold voice; actually, he was more than ready to enjoy each wee second of the situation, “so just confess what you did. There’re none of your poets and minstrels—if that’s what you like to call those arse-lickers that cannot even rhyme or alliterate—around, so your crime will be unheard and untold. None of the women you court—although I think “stalk” would be a more appropriated term—are here, so your moral purity is still granted. And of course, here there are no other knights of the glorious Round Table—none of your accomplices, I would say—you have to prove anything to. So just admit what you did.”  
How vehemently Claris denied what they three knew! Laris, on the other hand, remained quiet, chickened out by the shine of the edge under their heads. Kay simply decided to sharp the other knives better with the insults and whimpers they expelled in the background: the butcher’s knife, the carving knife, the kitchen knife, the cleaver and the little dagger he had bought for Seánna. He sighed, Sir Tadpole was still digging his heels in further and further in all senses, and Sir Toad was still too scared shitless to do the chorus as he used to. Kay, still wanting to torture them, was now cleaning those same knives slow and thoroughly, even smiling to himself thinking how soon those edges would be dirty and red again. Laughing, he threw yet another one to their direction, and finally Laris opened his mouth, to shriek. Very fitting. 

“Confess now! It’s your last opportunity!” 

“I swear on my kingdom and my beautiful Morvydd! I never, never laid a finger on your mistress!” shouted Claris, so sure of himself.

“See? That was your mistake. You probably went to her bedroom in your daily routine of stalking her, she told you to fuck off, and somehow you told her what you did, and then she told me everything. But the thing is, I only said Seánna had died. No more details,” he surprised himself how coldly he could speak considering how his blood was boiling in his veins, “As simple as that.”

“But… but… then you know,” whispered Laris in fear.

“Oh, I know, I know,” Kay almost laughed despite his increasing voice, “but I want to hear it from your foul mouths, you slanderers, murderers, monsters! Just fucking say it, damnit! Alright, alright, let’s calm down and play a funny game, after all the reward is the only thing you knights only give a fuck about: I’d be magnanimous to whoever speaks the first.”

He opened his hands and arms in a mockery of a peaceful gesture. As he had expected, Laris was too scared for his life to keep himself quiet. He was trembling and crying, and only God knew what kept him from peeing himself like a child, and yet, somehow, he found some volume in his throat. Alas, the true image of a Round Table knight: a criminal who took all the good left in the world, a coward that would only admit so when pointed with a knife and a traitor that would sell even his whore mother to get away with his crimes. They were also hypocrites, but that quality was represented mostly by Gawain, not by the pig that thus spoke:

“You’re right! The Lady Vivianne came to us, and she handed us a bottle of eitr. She told us what to do with it, how to do the ritual, and where to find your mistress. She also gave us some ring that belonged to Sir Gawain, and told us to leave it around the scene, so you would think he was guilty. We didn’t understand what that had to do with anything until Sir Patrise was poisoned with an apple intended for Gawain.”

“What was the ritual intended for?”

“W…What?”

“I asked,” Kay contained himself from screaming, but his fingers caressed the long forgotten bone knife, “What was the ritual for?”

“Good luck! It was for good luck!” and Laris broke up, crying even harder now. 

“And why did you put a bag on her head?” Kay asked, serious but threatening, especially as he grabbed the utensil. Laris denied energetically with his head, so Kay grabbed his damned face, making little wounds on it with his nails as he shook the knight, “I asked why did you put a bag on her head, you fucking criminal! Answer!”

“Because she was ugly,” whispered Claris besides them, “especially in comparison with our proper ladies.”

They knew they were sentenced. They really knew it, even more so after that answer. They just didn’t know what kind of fate Kay had reserved for them. That was torturing them, and he knew it. His grip around the handle was so hard his knuckles became white, but he simply turned around. Laris was asking for mercy out loud, claiming he had been the one to confess, Claris was insulting them both, one for spitting all out loud, the other for being about to murder them. Kay was more than used, even more, he actually preferred his “Murderer! Criminal! Traitor!” to “well, that’s just some seneschal, nobody of importance”. They just felt so good… 

“You’re a devil! You’re worse than Claudas, than Lucius, than Morgan LeFay!”

“I don’t think so,” he finally answered, and they froze as he put the knife back in the table, “Laris, my poor Sir Laris, you said the ritual was for good luck?”

“Yes…”

“Well, you were right, you’ve been blessed with good luck!” Slowly, he reached for the dagger under the table as he caressed Laris’ face and hair as if it were a dog, “I told you I would be magnanimous, and magnanimous I’ll be!”

The hope in Laris’ eyes lasted nothing. Quickly, Kay grabbed his hair and crossed his throat with the weapon intended for Seánna, almost a poetic revenge. Laris’ body began shaking as the basin received the red drops and Kay got back the kitchen utensil, preparing the next step. Claris screamed something he didn’t payed any attention to, and smiling like a hungry crazy werewolf, he lowered himself to his height, grabbed his neck and face and just screamed: “I was magnanimous, he won’t be seeing what I’ll do with you! I’m going to dry your blood until filling those basins, look at how big they are! I’ll grind your fucking bones, that’s why we’re in a mill! I’ll mix blood and bone, I’ll chop your putrefied meat! I guess I could make two big pies out of you, Sir Knight, and serve them to your Round Table. As for anything left, pigs you all are and to the pigs you’ll return.”

He was careful to remove the meat from the bones, and more careful he was when spicing Laris. Saffron was exotic and delicious, salt and pepper are a must, a bit of mustard and honey could go well. For the clearly desperate Claris who could not even babble proper words, he had thought a fresher bite, some mint in his case, and dried grapes to add texture. The stones ended the grinding as the storm died, and a fine white dust was produced that could have passed for flour in other circumstances. Cooking had always relaxed him, and had he not become a seneschal hated by them all or a moronic knight, he would have been a cook or a baker. A great care he put in those pies, and soon the delicious smell coming from the mill competed with that of the wet ground.

***

Three pies were served the following day: a little one filled with vegetables, the bigger others filled with Claris and Laris. The Queen had decided that, in order to celebrate the victory of Lancelot over Sir Mador and the execution of Sir Pinel, they would be retaking the banquet source of all those headaches. Kay had not been present in the first one, mournful and traumatized as he had been, but he wouldn’t be missing this one. 

To Sir Lancelot, reason as to why there had been no knights that could have defended Seánna in the first place, he served a good piece of meat pie. To the defeated Sir Mador, Sir Gareth, Sir Aglovale and many others, he also served meat pie, after all, when Gwenhyvwar had proposed to cancel the first banquet to not offend him they had said no. Sir Bors and Sir Lionel got it as well, although he had to claim to those Christian weirdos it was fish pie; so Christian for that, not so much when a woman had been raped and murdered and they had done nothing about it. Sir Gawain got a good bunch as well, as the Maiden’s Knight apparently lacked enough of a spine to defend a woman the damned Round Table didn’t like instead of sheepishly accept their stupid parties and go look for a French idiot; maybe the meat of some “brave knights” would inspire him—it was this or sending an assassin to him, and Kay had grown too impatient and too hateful of him to wait for one to do that job—. Sir Bedwyr got a little piece; Laris had shown he was a terrible friend, and so had done Bedwyr, fooling around when he needed him the most, they deserved each other.

“Why is the paste red?” one of those pigs asked.

“Saffron.” 

“That explains the taste!” exclaimed another.

“Yes! Delicious, isn’t it?”

They were surprised to see the seneschal so talkative, but most of them attributed it to his wickedness, somehow, and for once they were actually right. Few people got vegetable pie: Arthur and Gwenhyvwar, for they had wanted to cancel the first banquet, Morvydd and Cynon, for they had actually offered their help and indirectly given it so, and Owain and Mabon, for having been the ones to find Seánna. They complained for not getting meat, but sometimes, Kay argued, a vegetarian diet is the best solution.


End file.
